tectonic planet are rare
It’s because we have chins. They think we’re weird.
So if they are right, the Earth is incredibly rare and would be a great find for space faring civilizations. They also had plenty of time to pass by and find this incredibly rare life bearing sphere. But they didn’t. You can flip things how ever you want, the question remains - why haven’t we seen anyone?
It’s simple. We’re the first intelligent life in the galaxy. There is nobody else yet in our galaxy.
Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space. Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.
So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?
Suhweeet! We can be the Old Ones, Chutulu flatghn la!
Or there are plenty of societies at least as advanced as we are, but we can’t find each other because space is big and our stars tend to drown out our own puny EM emissions.
Yeah agreed, there’s no way we’re picking up alien radio broadcasts, not over the noise produced by a star.
On the other hand, if a civilization were creating a Dyson sphere, or other large constructions, we’d be able to see those unusual elements in the light spectrum coming off the star. So it is conspicuous that we haven’t seen anything like that.
There’s a fair question of “would it ever be practical to do such large constructs”. As far as energy capture, between advances in energy efficiency and solar capture, one could imagine having energy beyond our greatest ambitions with no or minimal space based solar energy collection. The resources involved to construct such a thing would involve a mass equivalent to an entire planet to make a super thin shell, and we’d want to be pickier than just any old matter.
Similar to people dreaming of Mars colonization as a workaround for climate change. Anything we could do to make Mars livable would be even harder than engineering Earth’s climate. Now maybe population growth may demand more area one day, or non replacement birth rates become so normal that population just starts shrinking.
There is the possibility that no one can “win” against the physics, and things didn’t get much more advanced in space for any species than they are today for us. If that’s the case, then we shouldn’t be surprised that other hypothetical civilisations cannot be found.
Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space.
I don’t think it is a valid point. Yeah, if we can build a ship that take us to Alpha Centauri it would lool like a small city, but that does not mean that it can last forever and the traveller would never need to settle on a planet. And looking what the humans did in the past, it seems logic that while a part would want to continue to explore, another part would want to settle on a planet.
Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.
So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?
Because it is habitable and can be used as a transit point, advanced outpost, refuelling base or any other use you can do of an habitable planet where to do things you have not to fight even with the environment (tourism for example).
Maybe it’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light? So it may not be a thing where aliens can just swing by our solar system to snap a few photos before heading off to the next one.
I’m sure that’s the case. You can travel to other stars without ftl, it’s just a lot slower and probably one way. It’s really pretty limiting for society, for instance, without ftl an interstellar “civilization” is basically out of the question, you can’t govern another star system without at the very least faster communication.
They actually haven’t had much time to pass by. Earths only been around for 4.6 billion years, a couple hundred million of that was spent being a cooling ball of magma. Space is fucking huge and the universe is still very young. It’s very likely we are on the early end of the development of life in the universe. A lot of things had to happen before our complex life could evolve.
As you said, after the formation of Earth, it took only a few hundred milion years for life to develop. That is incredibly short, almost instanteneously as soon as conditions for life were met, life formed. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, formed almost as soon as galaxies could form. So here we have a situation where a inteligent civilization could have formed anywhere in our galaxy 13 bil years ago or at any point in time after that. Chance is, if they had, by now they would have conquered the whole galaxy. Absence of any sign of inteligent life can be wxplained by the Great Filter. It could be any of the following: 1) interstellar travel is never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced, 2) Earth-like planets are so rare, that we are probably the only inteligent civ in our galaxy, 3) Earth-like planets are not that rare, but inteligent civs tend to destroy themselves before they manage to spread out to other planets… We don’t know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn’t take our existence for granted. We need to meticulously examine and neutralize any possible threats to human civilization. This is not fearmongering. It’s just common sense, after you take all the facts into account that I laid out.
We don’t know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn’t take our existence for granted.
If there is a great filter…
I mean, as you said, we’re pretty early to the scene. Why can’t we be the first in this galaxy? Perhaps planets like earth aren’t rare over the lifetime of a galaxy, but they are rare in these early years of a galaxy. In other words, earth just developed quickly, so now we’re here before any other earth-like planets have had a chance to develop intelligent life.
I don’t think that we are pretty early. Our galaxy already exists for so long, it’s unfathomable. Yet, it seems to be empty and lifeless.
My mistake, I thought you had said something to that effect.
Well for what it’s worth, we do seem to be early. Our sun appears to be among the first wave of “3rd generation stars” (stars that were born from the nebula of a supernova of a star that was born the same way, from another supernova). It’s thought that only those 3rd Gen stars will have planets with enough heavy elements to support life. All elements heavier than iron [26] on the periodic table, can only be created naturally in a supernova.
So yeah, the theory is, if we’re one of the first 3rd Gen stars out there in this galaxy, and if life formed on this planet basically as soon as it could have after the earth cooled enough, then we’re probably early on the scene for life.
- interstellar travel is never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced,
I like the idea behind the concept of the Great Filter, but that point does not seems logic as it would imply that irregardless of how advanced a civ is, they would not be able to build anything that can even make just a one way travel to a star just a few year light far away. Right, it is not simple, but a civ even just a couple centuries head of us should be able to do it.
My friend, that’s exactly my point. That is, they’ve had enough time to show up but they are nowhere to be seen.
Wait a moment, maybe I understand wrong (English is not my first language) but I understand that you said that the Great Filter is the reason why we don’t see them and point out 3 possible points.
I dispute your first point to be not really an explanation or an option since saying “never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced” just seems to be a too harsh limit on what a civ could do, which looking at our past history seems an unreasonable limit.
My friend, that’s exactly my point. That is, they’ve had enough time to show up but they are nowhere to be seen.
Your point seems to be that since there is the Great Filter (btw, to be proven) then there is no one else out there.
You exclude way simpler possibillities like the option that a civ just a couple centuries ahead of use could already be colonizating the nearby stars, they just are 1000 LY away so we cannot yet see them (assuming we even know what to look for).
Actually life needs complex elements that only form in neutron star collisions(kilonovas) It could have been that the universe needed to be a couple billion years old before the elements that could create complex life actually came into existence. Everything else is pretty accurate, and I do think interstellar travel will end up being impossible, even terraforming other planets seems like it’s a couple thousand years away.
As far as earth-like planets being rare, even if they are only 1 in 10,000 there would likely still be tens of millions in our galaxy alone.
I think 1 in 10k is way too common still. Somewhere between 1 in a billion to one in a trillion is more reasonable.
Maybe it’s because we’re not as evolved as we think. If aliens did appear, how many kooks would want to attack them because they are different?
If they land in one country, would other countries get jealous or scared, thinking that country now has an advantage? Shit, what happens if the neighbouring country had nukes; would they launch?
More likely is that if aliens had detected life here, Earth would be marked as a red, no-go zone, because of how unstable, tribal and violent we are.
Every conservative on earth would demand we attack the flying illegal aliens. Our planet’s dumbest of dipshit right-wingers would be outside shooting at clouds all night long.
What, it wasn’t enough to just gesture meaningfully at the state of the entire godamn planet when looking for reasons why aliens might want to avoid us?
Why the clickbait? Just put why in the title
It’s the title of the article. Should the OP just put whatever they want for a title?
This is a service I would appreciate. Or at least put it in the description.
Yes, appended in square brackets, to indicate that it is not part of the original text.
Yes, modern article titles are designed to get you to click it so they make money off advertising to you
Rare Earth by Peter Ward is what you’re after here. I took an elective in college that effectively was reading a bunch of space science (and history, it was odd) and discussing. This one caught me off guard but was a decent breakdown of a possible answer to Fermi.
I don’t necessarily agree with the supposition, mainly because it still comes from a place of specifically carbon-based life as the end goal. But they do lay out reasoning in an easy to understand way that was super neat to learn.
Time.
Timeline wise, we could be at the beginning of when other species are becoming sentient. Or we could have missed them by a billion years. The gap to get in contact is so massive that the odds are stacked against it ever happening.
Distance and time. No one seems to have a clue how far a light year is … I mean maybe ur finding someone in ur own galaxy over a big enough timeline but sorry 2000 light years to the nearest galaxy? Not a chance.
Yep, relativity is a bitch. Even if we could do the speed of light, our time here would pass so quickly that by the time we reached some place that had life, ours might have stopped existing.
And yes, I know a light year is not a measure of time, but distance, but it still takes time.
Blipblop: “Those creatures on that planet are perplexing. Constantly at war, decimating their natural resources, consuming everything in their paths. Like a cancer overtaking an organism. Should we contact them?”
Morklorp: “Are you fucking crazy?”
They are also loud and annoying!
Have you read the one about the talking meat?
The argument David Kipling made seems reasonable. Statistically the chance if there being almost no civilisations or the universe just teeming with life are the biggest. The parameters have to be tweaked just right for there being just a few civilizations in a galaxy. It’s not teeming with signals and chances of parameters being just right is low, so most probable is we being alone.
Because they’re jerks.
“It’s like winning the lottery,” Taras Gerya, a geophysicist at the research university ETH Zurich in Switzerland and an author of the study, told Mashable. “It can be so rare that we don’t have much of a chance to be contacted,” added Gerya, who coauthored the study with Robert Stern, a geoscientist at the University of Texas at Dallas. -article
Even on the remoteest of chances that there is it a sapient life form capable and technologically advanced enough to contact us in this galaxy cluster, much less nearby?
Why the hell would they? We are obviously fucking crazy.
Xenoanthroplology. We’re obviously not crazy and our many cultures are presumably much different from theirs. There would be enormous amounts to learn from studying our differences and our similarities.
Unless they’ve already simulated alien life in computer models… Then there’s not a lot left to learn.
Science. Threat analysis. Entertainment at our silly ways.
If they have abundant resources and energy, sending probes wouldn’t be a challenge.
So their whole argument is that tectonic plates are needed for complex life to emerge. There isn’t much proof for it either way obviously but I find the argument flawed.
In any case, here is why I think aliens are here, either waiting for us to divest ourselves of our economic system and destructive ways (capitalism breaks when you mix in easy space exploration and heavy automation) or observing us and how changes emerge in our society like we do with secluded tribes.
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Any advanced civ can tell a planet has life on it from a great distance. If simple life is rare, they would of had a probe here a long long time ago.
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We started modifying the climate over 3000 years ago. Any civ within an 1000 light year range would have had enough time to notice and make it here. That is around 7 million star systems.
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An advanced civ would have covered every single solar system with Von Newman probes.
I think the fernie paradox is more of a test than a rule. Any civ that can’t pull itself out of the muck is probably bad news for galactic society, so they wait and see.
I find the idea that all intelligent species have the same dominator instinct driving them to explore, exploit, and colonize to be flawed. Not even all humans have this instinct, it’s just that our western societies are all about domination so we grow up thinking it’s the norm.
I agree, that is why I didn’t bring up the possibility of enslavement or colonization. I’d even say the chances are higher of a civ being benign than not when reaching a space faring stage. I base this on mostly nothing.
I do believe an intelligent creature is probably at least mildly curious. Couple that with the likely hood of an advance civ having enough resources to build whatever projects they want, only a small subset of their population would need to be curious enough to make it a reality.
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